Wait a short moment for your AF Server 2018 container to be ready. In this example, I will give it the name af18.

Verification

Now we can check that the element, attribute and event frame that we created earlier in the 2017R2 container is persisted to the 2018 container. First, let's connect to af18 with PSE. Upon successful connection, notice that the name and ID of the AF Server 2017R2 is retained.

Our element, attribute and event frame are all persisted.

Finally, we can see that the version has been upgraded to 2018 (2.10.0.8628).

Congratulations. You have successfully upgraded to the AF Server 2018 container and retained your data.

Rollback

If you want to rollback to the AF Server 2017R2 container, you will need to use the backup that was automatically generated and stored in the folder

Once a PIFD database is upgraded, it is impossible to downgrade it as seen here stating "a downgrade of the PIFD database will not be possible". This means that it won't be possible to persist data entered after the upgrade during the rollback.

Explore new features

Computer Storage UOM

AF Server Connections history

Bulk deletes of event frames by database and/or template and within a specified time range

Conclusion

Now that the AF Server container has at least two versions available (2017R2 and 2018), you can really start to appreciate its usage for testing the compatibility of your applications with two different versions of the server. In the past, you would need to create two large VMs in order to host two AF Server. Those days are over. You can realize immediate savings in storage space and memory. We will look into bringing these containers into some cloud offerings for future articles.